Insects

Insects as symbols include economically valued bees, butterflies appreciated for their beauty, annoyances such as lice and flies, health hazards such as mosquitoes, and crop damaging locusts, weevils and the like.

In many countries insect names are terms of abuse such as bug, louse, vermin, flea, cockroach. Some insects are at the centre of superstition. The ladybird, for example, must on no account be harmed. Other insects appear in mythology in important roles, as, for example, the ant-people among the Hopi. Ants often symbolically represent industry, tenacity and intelligence. The grasshopper and cicada have been employed as symbols of nature and its rhythms and the June cricket is considered a friendly symbol betokening the halcyon days of summer. The praying manthis is a symbol of voracity. Worker bees (drones) are a symbol of enslavement while the Queen bee represents a female who is the centre of social attention. The scarab or dung-beetle, and the spider to some ancient symbologists, represented the creative force in the universe. The metamorphosis of the caterpillar has always been a symbol of human development endowing man symbolically, with what is perhaps the ultimate archetype: wings.